36 weeks

4 weeks to go!
absolutely crazy.

i can't believe we've got less than a month to go and i'm so thankful to still be feeling pretty great!

huge but good :)

now we're definitely starting to see a sock line at the end of the day from some ankle swelling and my wedding band is a bit too snug these days (though now i'm really glad i kept forgetting to get my engagement ring re-sized because it's just perfect now).
i'm really praying he'll be late so i can work for the next 4 weeks - people say i'll be changing my mind in a couple weeks, but the longer i work now means the less i'll have to go back in may before summer break (do you hear that, baby c?? take. your. time.)

things are starting to come together - we've officially graduated from birthing class and our little nursery is almost done. i'm in some serious nesting mode, like clean-out-every-drawer nesting. unfortunately we just moved, so things haven't really gotten that unorganized, but that doesn't keep me from trying.

so 4 more weeks...that's 4 more saturdays to sleep in for the next like 20 years. at that thought, i think i'm going to take a nap :)

lampshade makeover...success or failure?

do you ever have those projects that you're just not sure about?
that's what this little lampshade makeover is.

we had a big, white drumshade right next to all the bright, colorful pillows in the baby room and it just wasn't working. i had a pot of orange dye going to dye some clothespins and decided to try out {this little tutorial} on dying a lampshade. this shade is actually cracked on the back because i'm horrible at moving shades apparently and i've been meaning to get a new one so i figured that dying it couldn't mess it up.

(coincidentally, i left the clothespins in for too long because i got distracted and they turned a pinky-red instead of orange, so it was more like 2 fails. but i'm totally using them still...)

nothing too technical. i just painted it on with a paintbrush and gave it about 3 coats. in the end, it's a bit streaky and i can't decide if it's one of those "oooh-hand-dyed-in-india" looks or a "homemade-dyed-in-the-kitchen" feel :)

either way, it's staying for now and i crossed one more thing off the to-do list (but i am keeping an eye out for something else, just in case)


and how cute is that little giraffe?? thanks to the sis-in-laws, i've got quite the chic animal collection. love.

a martha bookshelf knock-off {aka my hubby is awesome}

while we were home over christmas, i text james this picture of a martha stewart bookshelf that i loved


and this is what he made me.
no plans. no tutorials. just a cell phone picture. he is awesome.

i so love it.

and while we're on the topic, he made 2 A- and 2 A's in the first semester of his doctoral program. i'm quite proud.

AND he spent his 29th birthday last week eating hamburgers at the hospital cafeteria and going to birthing class.
and didn't complain at all.

he's definitely a keeper.

pillow progress

what goes in a big white room with a brown striped rug, an orange swirly rocker, and a green polka-dotted bed skirt?

lots and lots of really bright pillows, of course

a whole daybed of pillows to lounge on
i do love me some patterns

thankful for a snow day + the weekend + mlk day off school to get these done.
sometimes when i'm walking by the room, i just stop to look...
and get really excited
and then get really nervous
all at the same time.
is that normal?

really glad the sewing is done because i'm getting quite large and crawling around on the floor cutting things out is not as easy as it used to be. pinning the bed skirt on last week left me sounding like i'd just run a marathon. not to mention that i kept getting stuck behind the rocker...
it wasn't a pretty sight.

alright, things are going on the walls this weekend!

the baby has a bedskirt

my parents gave me the most beautiful, wonderful stack of fabric for christmas and i've been having so much fun cutting into it this week.



i wanted a modern-ish, boy-ish, straight bed skirt for the daybed and baby bed in the nursery and, lucky for me, that's an easy-peasy project. i used amy butler's lotus full moon print fabric and made it pretty much like i made our bed skirt {here}. this time i used velcro to attach the skirt to the bed frame like {this little tutorial}

so an hour of ironing, hemming, and velcro-ing later and walla



it's all starting to come together...7 weeks and counting!

covering the glider

now that we're back from christmas, i'm in full-fledged nesting mode. james asked this weekend if this was a baby thing or if our whole lives would be filled with constant projects. i told him i wasn't sure yet :)

we found out we were pregnant right before we moved, so my mom was sweet enough to let us steal her glider. the only problem was that it didn't quite match the rest of our fabric. i've actually had this orange fabric wrapped around the cushions oh-so-(not)professionally for a couple monthes now, trying to get over my fear of curves. surprisingly in the end, it didn't take long at all. now don't go looking at those curves too closely or anything, but you know i don't really go for perfect on my projects :)





easy enough - i doubled up my fabric and cut roughly around it,pinned it on pretty tight, sewed around it, and then tried it on. i added big brown buttons to break up the pattern a little and distract from my less-than-perfect curves and i kinda love them.
less than an hour later and all done!

now for all the time i saved on the glider cushions, i spent that and more trying to cover this little booger...

we definitely needed a footstool to go along with it and since the ones that glide were about $100 past our price range (seriously?!), they were quickly out of the question

when i brought this home from Goodwill, james said it was one of the ugliest things he had ever seen. and it was so very true. it was even yellow-er and plastic-y-er in person. but it was only $5...

this was lots of trial and error. more errors than anything. the saddest part - i spent several hours folding and ironing and re-folding and pinning and sewing and re-sewing pleats only to finally sew them on and realize it looked way too girly. grrrr.
but oh well. it's done. and we've got a place to put our feet. and i'm totally loving that little dog print! does it go with orange swirls? probably not. but that's kinds how i like things :)


and now we officially have a place to rock

31 weeks

once a girl at church told me she only had 9 more weeks to go and i thought she was kinda crazy because 9 weeks is over 2 months and 2 months is a long time. now that it's my life changing forever in only 9 weeks, it seems like tomorrow. wow. i now get it. 9 weeks isn't all that long. and i think i'm ok with that.

a little crafting humor

oh. my. goodness.

these make me laugh so hard.

but seriously, james says things like this to me all the time

:)

Happy Wednesday!

kindergarteners...

mrs. kent, you're belly is so big that you're going to have to scoot the seat in your car so far back that you won't be able to drive anymore. You won't even be able to put your seatbelt on and somebody else will have to drive you to school!

oh, and mrs. kent, you talk like a cow.

what?

i mean, a cowgirl.

errrr, thanks?

true story

good thing they're so cute

new year's goals

do you do new year's resolutions?

i used to not. i'm more of a cross-it-off-my-list-as-soon-as-possible, hate-to-fail kind of girl. so new year's resolutions weren't exactly successful type things for me.

but a couple years ago i realized that in december, i don't want to be in the same place that i was the january before. i want to grow and change, even if i'm not completely successful. one of james' favorite phrases is being intentional. it's a growing process for sure.

so last year i typed out my list of goals and taped it in my calendar. was i 100% successful? ummm, no. if back messages were a love language, that would be james'. and ironically enough, i'm horrible at giving them. they really hurt my hands a lot. so he certainly didn't get one a week, but i'm pretty sure he got more than if i hadn't put it on there. i wrote a letter a week until about june. and then we moved. (that's what i'm blaming it on at least) but i did learn to be more intenetional about snail mail, cause who doesn't love to get real mail? there are some things i actually finished and some things i just got a little better at. (1 book a month - does it count if i read 4 at the beach this summer??) either way, the list kept me focused on some goals.

so now i'm off to work on this years'. some of them will be repeats. i'm certainly hoping to lose a little weight this year, specifically 7-8 pounds in the middle of march :) one might be just to survive until we can sleep through the night again. please tell me that can happen again??

Happy New Years!